


The Beyond

by caballo_de_abdera



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Octet - Malloy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Online Dating, Body Swap, Canon Compliant, Chee - Freeform, Clones, Escafil Device, Estreens, Frolis Maneuver, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Gleet Biofilter, Helmacrons - Freeform, Hereth Illint, Hybrid Morphing, Morphing Addiction, Morphing Auras, Morphing Disability, Morphing Illness, Morphing Insurance, Nartec, Natural Morphing, Non-Consensual Acquiring, Nothlit Support Group, Nothlits, Pemalite Crystal, Sapient Whales, Sario Rip, Starfish Split Personality, The Ellimist - Freeform, Touch-Starved, Trans Character, Whales, YouTube, Z-Space, anonymous, body theft, deepfakes, you can acquire dna from hair ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:14:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24882124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caballo_de_abdera/pseuds/caballo_de_abdera
Summary: How would morphing tech disrupt human society? (or, "like Octet but nothlits")
Relationships: Cassie (Animorphs)/Ronnie Chambers, Channing Tatum/Channing Tatum
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Summer Solstice Swap





	The Beyond

I hurried down the steps into the church basement, shaking water from my umbrella as I went. The walls were lined with flyers for worship groups, discussion sections, and other types of meetings. Even though I was late, and even though I had triple-checked the address and room number before leaving home, I stopped to scan the wall. “N.A. meeting, room 054”.

The door to the meeting room was ajar. I could hear voices as I approached. Maybe I wasn’t as late as I thought. When I reached the door I almost ran into the woman who was coming to shut it. She was a middle-aged black woman with her hair tied back. Her smile was welcoming. “We’re just getting started. Come in.”

I stepped into the room, hearing the familiar hum and beep of the biofilter installed in the door frame. The church basement was drab and unremarkable. A stack of chairs, an old piano in the corner, and a small table by the door with an electric kettle and a coffee maker. Some of the chairs had been placed in a circle around the open center of the room. Six were occupied, two vacant. A leather purse marked the friendly woman’s chair; I crossed to my seat and sat down.

Why was I so nervous? I folded my small hands into my lap and studied my nails. Nobody was looking at me. But they knew why I was here. Like all of us, I’d given something up.

The woman had taken her seat again. The circle was complete. She began to speak.

“So, hello everyone, thank you for coming tonight. My name is Paula. I was here when this chapter was founded and have been running this weekly session for some time. We’ll get started now with some individual shares, and end with the ceremony. Newcomers, you don’t have to share, you can just listen. We just ask that everyone be respectful, and no feedback or crosstalk. So, would anyone like to start us off?”

I took a closer look at the rest of the group. The young man to my right looked vaguely familiar. The woman on my left was shockingly beautiful. There was also a man with a hood over his head with some kind of transparent panel. Nobody seemed particularly eager to share. Then the white woman directly across from me nodded and said, “I’ll go”.

Paula smiled and said, “All right.”

The woman stood up. Her blonde hair was loosely coiled over one shoulder. She was wearing a tank top and yoga pants, and there were circles under her eyes.

After a moment, she said, “My name is Jessica, and I’m a nothlit.”

“Hi, Jessica,” the group droned. I joined in, a moment late.

“Nothlit. I’m still getting used to saying that. I haven’t shared my story here before, but I know some of you recognized me last week, so I might as well talk. Yes, I’m _that_ Jessica. As if sticking to first names will keep me anonymous. I tried to keep a low profile since my incident… but I haven’t been talking about it. I need to talk about it.”

She paused, staring at the floor.

“What you have to understand is that everyone was doing it. There’s a lot of pressure in pro sports. Training is hard. The temptation was right there. It started innocently enough. They gave us the morphing power to protect us from injuries. You sprain an ankle, you walk off the field, turn into your pet cat, and you’re back in the game.

“But in the locker room, everyone was talking about it. ‘Did their goalie seem taller to you?’ ‘Do you think she’s… morphing?’”

Jessica looked up. I thought I could see a glint of anger in her eyes.

“Doping was one thing. At least they could test for that. But performance-enhancing morphing is undetectable. _Was_ undetectable. Especially if it’s just enough to make your legs longer when you’re running, or to make you a bit heavier before you run into someone.

“There were others on my team doing it. They started to play better and would get really, really tired after the games. I knew, I mean deep down, I knew what they were doing. But it was so easy to look the other way, because they weren’t talking about.

“And then it happened. First playoff game, one of the other team’s forwards brushed past me. Just a moment of contact, skin to skin. Before I knew it, she had scored. I had just… zoned out for all of six seconds. My teammates were looking at me like, _What’s wrong with Jessica_ , and then I noticed the smirk on the woman’s face. And it clicked. She had acquired me.”

I could tell Jessica was reliving that moment. Righteous anger was radiating off of her. “That was enough for me. I had a little chat with my teammates during halftime. And when I went back on the field for the second half, I went out with the legs of the fastest woman on our team.

“That playoff season was incredible. Before the fans knew, when it was just the players competing, figuring out how to use morphing to make us faster and stronger without anyone noticing. It was thrilling. The unknown, unexpected challenges. The innovation. Learning to master morphing subtly and quickly. And my team, we were some of the best.

She looked suddenly stricken. “I just… the incident. I didn’t know it could happen. I mean, you’ve seen it, right? The video? I mean, if you haven’t been living under a rock…”

I winced. She wasn’t wrong. It was one of the first morphing accidents to make international news.

“So I’d been pushing the envelope. Experimenting with animal bodies, and my teammates’ bodies. But I went beyond that and… Well, it was the semifinals. I’d been feeling queasy but I thought I could play through it. But when the game started, I just couldn’t control it. I was morphing. The whistle blew pretty quickly, but I couldn’t stop. And when I morphed straight from cat to our goalie, I knew something was really wrong.

“At first I couldn’t feel it. But people started screaming. I knew something was wrong and then suddenly there was this extra weight on my back. And pretty quickly it started moving. I could hear him breathing, growing out of my neck, pushing his way out of my body. There were arms behind me and they weren’t my arms.

“Now we all know about _hereth illint_ , the dna burping… but at the time I had no idea. I thought I was losing my mind. A man I’d just acquired was growing out of me.

“Let’s count the ways in which I was fucked. Caught cheating? That was the least of it. Acquiring people without their permission? Morally bad, but a legal gray area back then. But I’d acquired a man. A black man. One of the star players from the men’s league. This transcended sports. I brought all of our country’s feelings about race, about sex, about identity boiling to the surface.

“I wasn’t really thinking about any of that. I know why I did it. I wanted to win, and he was the fastest person I knew in Cincinnati. I certainly wouldn’t do it again, knowing the risks. But acquiring him isn’t what I regret. It’s just that moment on the field I want to take back.

“In the middle of the chaos, for a moment, we were both standing and facing each other and we made eye contact. I was looking right into the eyes of the man I’d just burped into existence. Then I started screaming, too. That’s the part that gets me. I never saw him again. But his face is seared into my memory. He looked… scared. He looked confused. He was alive but had no memory, no past, no way of understanding what was going on. I’d brought him into the world, and he was scared, and I was so horrified by him.”

She paused, grasping for something to say. “I… wish I’d understood enough to give him a hug, or something.”

“Um, so, that’s it. The story of Jessica. Well, almost it. I never morphed again. Except the last time. You wouldn’t believe what people started asking me about. Using my allergy to make more clones. I wasn’t okay with that. I morphed into my sister — just enough for the two hour timer to start — and now I’m a nothlit. Not too different. My eyes changed color. Turns out we’re both going to need glasses pretty soon.”

She nodded to herself, then sat down abruptly.

#

“My name is Henry. I’m a nothlit. But I used to be an addict.”

“Hi, Henry.”

Henry was sharing next. He was standing in the middle of the circle, turning to face different members of the group as he spoke. His eyes disappeared behind large circular glasses. There was a big, lazy grin sprawled across his face.

“It’s no special story. Everybody knows somebody who got too deep into it. I was at some dead-end job I didn’t care about, living alone and working for beer money… And one night I turn on the news and it’s like— the Power Rangers are real? I mean, like, not Zords, not robots, but real animals, and real morphing and real aliens. It was a while before I got the power but I honestly don’t remember much about that time. I just remember the anticipation.

“The first time I morphed… The stuff they warn you about, it didn’t bother me. The awful body noises, the disorientation, the instincts. Whatever, man. I was flying! I was free! I rose up above the city, and looked down over everything. I could see every place I’d ever lived all at once. It got harder to stay focused during the work day. Smoke break? Morph break. I’d lock the door to my office and open the window and circle the building a few times.

“I started to making friends. Flying buddies. They coached me through the basics of thermals and conserving wing energy. Once I’d covered the basics, I got really, really into it. This one time my buddy Damon dared me to dive with him. Play a game of chicken. Well, hawk-chicken. Whoever dives furthest wins.”

Henry started to gesticulate with his hands, twisting them through the air like two birds in flight. “So that day. It was cloudy. We came bursting out of the clouds and went plummeting, plummeting down toward the park below. I’d never pushed so hard against the morph. My bird instincts told me to stop but there was Damon, still going at breakneck speed and the ground was coming closer, closer. Eventually I gave in but the adrenaline rush was wild. Completely wild. Even after I demorphed I was still feeling jittery.

“That’s what hooked me. Morphing for the thrill of it. The things you can do and, like, get away with are crazier than Power Rangers. This is Looney-Tunes-level insanity. Jumping out of a window and free-falling for a minute before going bird. Staring down an onrushing train before going roach.

“So far, so normal, right? But then… I got into really weird stuff. You read about the doctor who flipped out during surgery and turned into a chinchilla-gorilla? They diagnose it as ‘stress-induced hybrid morphing.’ Like it’s some affliction. And that happens, yeah. But you can control it, too.

“I started staying up for four days straight to see what would happen to me. The video of me as a cat-fly got a lot of attention online. I was having trouble keeping a job, but for a while I was one of only six people in the whole world who had morphed three animals at once. Heifer, antelope, chimp, by the way. But being part of that small group… being kinda famous… that meant something to me.

“Then it started getting really dangerous.” I was studying his expression more carefully. He looked happy. He wasn’t getting lost in the story, though. He just looked completely at ease.

“I mean, the guidelines are way overblown. You can’t trust some people’s common sense, I suppose. But I was doing the actual dangerous stuff. You’ve heard of natural morphing? Getting stuck and actually going through metamorphosis and coming back out. I did that. Not a fan of bugs really, but tadpoles? Excellent. Really excellent. Not just getting to stay in morph longer than two hours… But the absolute rush of coming back.

“You forget what it is to see, to hear, to smell… you also forget how to think and feel. Coming alive after being inhuman for so long… It’s even better than the morphing rush. Like you’re seeing and feeling the whole world for the first time and you finally understand how amazing it is to just be alive. But you get used to yourself again, pretty quickly. I guess that makes sense. People get used to all kinds of stuff.

“So I was living alone. Speaking of dangerous, Damon didn’t make it. Went dragonfly and never returned. He was my roommate at the time. Well, I’d been crashing at his place. It was harder to make plans… I think I was looking for my next fix.

He paused, and then put one finger up into the air, a silent _aha!_

“Then I heard the rumor about starfish. I mean, I was up for trying anything. Split in two? Really see yourself from the outside? When I did it, I couldn’t believe it worked. There I was, standing in Damon’s apartment, looking at myself.

“But the bad part of the rumors were true, too. We looked the same, but we were different on the inside. My other half got the ‘sense of determination’, as he says. I’m the one that’s just along for the ride. And, you know, we got along okay, but it was confusing. I think he found me really tough to deal with… and it turns out a life just doesn’t have room for two of the same people.

“Eventually we sat down to talk about it. Maybe we could have made it work. I still don’t really know. But, eventually, I insisted— he insisted, I mean. He insisted that I go somewhere and start over. So I moved here, started a new life. Actually, he had another condition, too. That’s why I’m _here_ here, in the group. He didn’t want me morphing anymore, just in case it got confusing. You understand.

“Like I said, we were still at Damon’s old place. And still had some of his clothes. So I found some of his hair, and acquired him, and now that’s what I look like.”

His smile was perfectly serene, as he sat down and ended his story.

“I think it was all for the best, of course. I recognize on some level, maybe if I could still morph, I’d get unlucky. I wouldn’t come back from it. But… I miss it. I mean, I’m happy, but boy, do I miss it.”

#

“Who’s next? Any more shares?” There’d been a silence after Jessica and Henry. Paula had looked at me invitingly, but I looked away on instinct. I definitely hadn’t wanted to go first. But two people had gone, and I thought, maybe I should go before I lost my nerve. But having looked away, it was like I’d decided already, and now that there was a silence I didn’t want to be the one to break it.

“Well,” Paula said. “I’m always up for sharing. Like I said, my name is Paula, and I’m a nothlit.”

“Hi, Paula.”

She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Clearly, she’d told this story before.

“Let’s see… I’d been married for, oh, two or three years when Escafil devices became more widely available. Now, my husband and I, we did discuss getting one. A lot of folks in the neighborhood were morphing. If you could commute by flying, you could sell your car! Not to mention the utility morphs to help with the yard work. But when it came time to decide if morphing was something we wanted in our lives, we weren’t totally comfortable.

“First of all, Brian had had family in California when all that terrible business happened. And it just didn’t seem— to me, that is, just to me, we all make our choices— it didn’t seem natural. It didn’t seem right. We consulted our priest, of course. And Brian and I decided, together, the bodies we’d been given would be enough.

“Not that it was always easy, mind you. I love gardening, for instance, and it was hard to keep up. I had to follow all the new rules about avoiding pesticides but I still had to pollinate things the old-fashioned way. And I’d complain a little to Brian, the way you do, and he’d listen. Now I suppose it’s clear that he wasn’t listening. Not really.

“Brian used to tell stories, you see. His drinking buddies would say how great it was to make love, now that their wives could morph. Morphs with bigger busts, or younger morphs. Even their friends’ wives, he said. He would tell me, with a tone in his voice like, can you believe these people? And I’d disapprove and laugh and I thought that was it. Just talk. I thought we were both happy with what we had.

"Well, some of you know or might have guessed that Brian and I are divorced. He did something I could not forgive. One day I came home from work earlier than usual. Brian’s car was in the driveway, but he wasn’t downstairs. I thought I heard a voice upstairs, coming from our bedroom, but it wasn’t Brian’s voice. It was a woman’s voice. It was my voice.”

Paula’s story had been matter-of-fact, but I could hear the contempt creeping in at the seams.

“My husband had been morphing me behind my back. He’d handled one of the devices, got the morphing power, and kept it a secret. At some point, he’d acquired me. And he’d been using me. Who knows for how long. Using my body—without my consent—and against every single thing I thought our marriage stood for. The day that I—”

A little squeak broke into Paula’s steady tone. She collected herself enough to continue.

“Pardon me. I prefer not to go into a lot of detail about that day. But I’ve spoken to my therapist about it. I think… there are some feelings I want to share with the group. That moment was a betrayal. I knew right away that he had lost my trust. Lost me for good. And I was furious. He’d spoiled my body for me. The body I’d carried for thirty-nine years. Now it was his as much as mine, and I could never take it back.

“I only ever morphed once. After the divorce. A simple _frolis_ of friends of friends. It made perfect sense — new body, new identity. No need to worry about Brian impersonating me. Sure, it took some getting used to. You all understand that. But at least, now that I’m a nothlit, I know that my body is mine alone.”

“The thing is…” Her face was scrunching up as she reached for the right words. “That day… I didn’t recognize myself. The way he made me sound. The noises. He sounded like a woman in one of those pornographic films. Squealing, and moaning. I felt betrayed, and angry but also so… ashamed. The way he made me sound… Like it wasn’t me, but it could have been. Like he was taking pleasure in being me in a way I never had.

“This new body… it’s a blessing, in a way. A chance for a new start. I hold onto that. But sometimes I need to talk about the woman I left behind. The one I still carry with me.

“Thank you. That’s it for me. Thank you for listening. Anyone want some coffee?”

#

I was sipping my second cup when Karly started to share.

“Okay so sex is on the table? So to speak? I wasn’t sure I could share that kinda thing. It’s okay? Okay. Yeah, I’m Karly, and I’m a nothlit.”

Karly was the pretty one I’d noticed earlier, in a blazer and pants and perfectly bobbed hair. She spoke quickly, but not nervously. I liked her.

“Do you remember what it was like to date before morphing? Especially online? Does anyone remember that? All the pointless small talk. Trying too hard to be clever, to be funny, to seem smart but not boring, to seem interested but not needy. Desperately bantering, to try and ignite a single spark. All that work, messaging back and forth, and if you made it to a first date, the possibility that you’d see the person in the real world and bounce right off.

“I felt that way a lot. Like I was the one people bounced off of. I looked a little—” Karly cut off that train of thought and kept going, but I thought I saw her glance my way. I knew I wasn’t that pretty, and like, whatever, but I still flushed with embarrassment. And in a way, a little bit of satisfaction.

“Then it was less about what you said and what was on your profile and just about your pictures. Scrolling and scrolling, looking for someone who knows how to make themselves look hot in a picture online and who might actually be hot in person. And then having to see if the other connection, the person-to-person connection, was there.

“I just couldn’t compete. I thought it was something I was doing. Maybe I wasn’t funny enough. Guys like funny, right? Maybe if I’d gone to grad school, or had more money, or cared at all about designer boardgames. All stuff under my control, sorta, right? My momma always told me I’d find someone way day. Someone who saw me for who I was. Maybe if I bought the right clothes, flipped my hair a certain way, delivered a single, perfect giggle. That’s all stuff I could work on. Turns out that was all bullshit.”

Despite what she was saying, I found myself wondering if she was really that different in her old body. It wasn’t just that she was pretty—she was confident and charming.

“It was dumb luck I was one of the first people who got to morph. Applied to one of those studies: ‘Are you anxious? New animal dream therapy yadda yadda yadda’. They made me sign an NDA and had me turn into a golden retriever instead of giving me Zoloft. I never went back for a second session. I had something else to find out.

“I had a two step plan. First, I found a hot guy. Lured him to a date under false pretenses. You know, fake pic, really cringey dirty talk, playing into his fantasies. Met up with him for a drink. That date was terrible, seriously, the worst, but I made sure to touch his hand and acquire him.

“Step two: leverage my new hot guy dating profile to find an even more attractive woman. Hotter than you could find cruising on your own. During the date, I slipped off to the bathroom, demorphed from hot guy, and brushed past her on the way out. I didn’t feel bad about it. It’s not like I was gonna steal her identity, defraud her. I was giddy. I was gonna get to find out how it felt to make a knockout first impression.

“Then came the moment of truth. Would it really be that different, dating with a new body? Or would it matter more what I said, how I carried myself, who I was on the inside? Surprise, surprise, turns out all I needed was to be fucking hot. You wouldn’t believe what people put up with to fuck someone that good looking.

“I gotta say… that stretch of time, the time before everyone and their dog could morph, was so depressing. I had some great dates, a few flings, the rare liaison, but I couldn’t get over how fake it all felt. No matter what I did, no matter how I behaved, the guy always wanted to sleep with me. And sure, fucking as a hot person feels good. But it’s more the novelty of it than anything really substantial. I cycled through a dozen different beautiful bodies. Turns out sex feels like sex however you look.”

I was feeling a little unsettled, a little ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. It was silly, but I was relieved to hear her say that. A lot of my friends were desperate to get the chance to to experiment with different kinds of bodies. On some level I knew I’d made the right choice, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like to explore other options. I guess sometimes you have to be okay with not knowing.

“Then morphing went public,” Karly continued. “It went public in a major way. Taylor Swift was seen with six different men in six different cities in one day. Ryan Gosling proposes to an eighteen year old girl in Utah. And that was just the start. The black market for hot celebrity DNA exploded.”

Oh, duh, I was feeling jittery because I’d had two cups of coffee. Maybe I had a lower caffeine metabolism now?

Karly grinned. “Nowadays, you want to fuck Channing Tatum? You want to fuck Channing Tatum as Channing Tatum? It’s easy. You can buy his hair from his personal website. He’s made enough money selling his DNA to retire ten times over.

“I gave up on the dating scene for a while. Spent a lot of time with my parents, as myself. You see, once the celebrity brinksmanship started, the whole dating enterprise completely changed. Ninety percent of the available dating pool were Beyonce, Katy Perry, and Brad Pitt. Young Brad, of course, thank god for the props closet from _Interview with the Vampire_.

“Anyway, turns out you only want to fuck the hottest people in the world so many times. Things got back to normal, sorta. There were fashions. Trends. Body types that went in and out of style. But it was a more level playing field, you know? Once you could morph, you could play the game.

“I was spending less and less time as myself. Even outside of dating, outside of fucking, sometimes it was nice to do errands and just be, like, really, really pretty. And then it happened. It’s so fucking humiliating, looking back. I caught feelings.

“To be fair, we had a total meet cute. It was windy. We were both carrying papers. Seriously. I know. He stumbled and dropped his. I tried to catch his and dropped mine. We spent ten minutes putting ourselves in order and staring into each other’s eyes. He asked for my number, and I left with a warm glow inside.

“The next day, we were texting, and he started saying how nice it was to meet a normal woman. A real woman. And I thought, _uh oh_.’

“I think we’ve all been there, one way or another. You know it’s like when you wear makeup, and a guy tells you how pretty you look without makeup, and you think, ‘that’s ironic’ but also ‘better not let him see the real me.’ I weighed my options. Fess up, and risk losing the connection? Or get off the carousel. Stop chasing the latest thing.”

Karly’s expression softened. Her tone took on a far-away quality.

“I didn’t nothlit right away. He wasn’t suspicious that he never saw me for more than two hours at a time. But we wanted to move in together, so I decided to commit. I was feeling more grounded. More ready to settle down. I never really expected to stay in my old body forever. And he made me feel special, without expecting me to change. That meant a lot. A surprising amount, actually.”

She snapped back to her chatty, collected self, so abruptly I wasn’t sure if what I’d seen was authenticity or really good acting.

“And yeah, it didn’t work out. It’s not like we had some perfect relationship. He always claimed he did half the household chores, but I never once saw him fold a blanket. He thought I should spend less time ‘climbing the corporate ladder’. I thought his taste in music sucked, and he wished I’d eat more spicy food. But I didn’t expect perfect. I just wanted to keep feeling like we belonged together.

“Here’s the punchline. When he left me, he did it for an _estreen_ who could morph to look like an anime girl. Fuck. Me.

“My momma used to tell me if I kept my face looking a certain way, I’d get stuck. That’s how I feel. Like a kid who didn’t listen to her mother. I hadn’t seen her since I morphed for good. Not until after the breakup. When I rang the door, she didn’t recognize me. I was just some beautiful stranger weeping on her doorstep. I had to convince her that it was me. It still takes her a moment, sometimes, to recognize her daughter. Anyway. I’m done.“

#

“My name is Ed… and I’m basically a nothlit. Technically not. Technically, a nothlit is a person who morphed and never demorphed. And as a consequence, they can never morph again. I’m just that last part. I’m someone who can never morph.”

I suddenly realized something odd about Ed. He was a big man, with a close-cropped beard. But the gloves, the long pants, the see-through hood. Not a single bit of skin was exposed to the outside air. The hood slightly muffled his booming voice.

“One of the first things I learned about morphing tech was that it reset your body to DNA-original. Couldn’t miss it. The tragedies in the news of people demorphing and dying due to congenital heart defects or misplaced stents. There’s less news out there about people like me. Morphing is painless for most people. But I have a pre-existing condition where, for whatever reason, the anesthetic effect doesn’t kick in. Morphing sends every part of my body into terrible, excruciating pain. They don’t know that it would kill me, but chances are, that level of pain would kill me. Not a risk I’ll ever take. No thank you.

I felt a chill, and a pang of guilty relief. I had no idea conditions like that even existed. Judging by the other faces in the circle, I wasn’t alone. Even Henry looked vaguely concerned.

“But what’s so bad about not morphing? Heh. I’m asking you all like you don’t already know. When my doctor told me I shouldn’t morph, it was disappointing, but I didn’t know how bad it was going to get. Not just for me, but for all of us.

“Morphing seemed like the next big thing— something that might save human society. At last you could walk in someone else’s shoes and learn from it. The power of true empathy. Well, you see how it turned out. It was all hype. Like the internet turned up to eleven.

“First it came for my livelihood. I was working as a contractor, a lot of electrical work, and I started losing jobs. Insurance premiums went up if you couldn’t morph. A nasty fall, a deep cut — that kind of injury started becoming an acceptable risk, because it was so easy to cure.

“I don’t know if you all have had trouble finding work. But anything with a hint of danger, a bit of physical risk, a bit of actual manual labor in the job description—you gotta be insured, and you gotta be able to morph out.”

Again, I felt relieved. I was going to be teacher and didn’t need to worry about that kind of insurance. At least, not yet. Things had changed so quickly, it was anyone’s guess what the future held.

“It dawned on me pretty quickly that I was fucked both ways. Real nothlits, you all, your new bodies can’t be acquired. Quirk of the tech. Me, I have to have the other kind of insurance, too. Identity insurance. Anyone acquires me, my life is over.

“The last time somebody touched me was in the grocery store. He backed into me in front of the canned tomatoes. I got the wind knocked out of me and you know, they say you can tell when you’re acquired, if you know what it’s like. But I’ve heard sometimes there’s no trance. And the guy that bumped me, he was walking away so suddenly. Didn’t even stop to see if I was okay. I couldn’t let go of the idea that he’d done it intentionally. Acquired me for some criminal intent. I followed him out of the store. I had to be sure. I took care of it.”

His face grew dark.

“I can never be too careful. You see I got these gloves, I keep my pants tucked in. This hood I had custom made so it’s easy to see and be heard. But I got other backup protections. You can’t tear this fabric. It’s not quite bullet proof, but almost. I never use a public bathroom. I have accounts set up with MorphLock and with Escafilter. Nothing’s for sure, but I won’t give up my life without a fight.

“Nothing’s more important to me than the liberty to be myself. I don’t let anyone touch me, and that’s a price I’m willing to pay. Connection is overrated. No matter what changes out there, I’m Ed in here. No one else gets to be Ed.”

#

<My name is Toby. I’m a nothlit.>

The familiar looking young man was using thought-speak. We could all do it, and there was nothing wrong with it, but it felt a little provocative to break the group norm of speaking out loud.

<Look, I don’t trust that biofilter on the door, okay? You know how easy it is to bug someone’s home these days? Actual bugs, ha. When I use thought-speak, I know only the seven of you can hear what I have to say.

<Sometimes this group is really fucking depressing. Sorry, Paula. No responding. I know. I don’t think you all realize what’s happened to the world.

It was a little eerie. Toby didn’t move. He was sitting with his hands folded, scanning the room with his eyes. I couldn’t figure out why he was so familiar to me. Especially since at the same time, he seemed so generic. So forgettable.

<You ever hear of deep fakes? Remember that? Sounds quaint to think of these days. Putting words in someone’s mouth with a fake video. You could make the footage a little grainy to cover up any artifacts. A bad copy was enough to cause a political scandal. Even if the fake was found out, even after correcting the record, people didn’t forget what they thought they saw.

<Even then, they blamed the tech. Tried to get you scared of it. Fucking luddites. The tech isn’t the problem. It’s people.

<In China, in the Yellow Mountains, you know how they get food to the hotel at the top? They have a man carry it. There’s a cable car tourists take to the top, but they pay a man to carry it up more than five thousand steps. Two enormous parcels balanced on his shoulders, he sweats his way up a humid mountainside. The conditions he works under seem inhumane. They are inhumane. But his labor is cheap. It’s cheaper to pay a man like him to carry food up a mountain than it is to use the cablecar that brings the tourists up. I bet someone told that man to worry the cablecar would put him out of a job. I bet someone told him the same thing about the morphing cube. Didn’t mention he’d never be able to afford to touch one. His whole life is worth less. No matter how far the tech goes, he’s gonna be climbing that mountain til he dies.

<Another example for you. You know what kids are watching on YouTube, right? It’s bad enough that videos for grownups are all two degrees away from reactionary small-minded propaganda. That’s how you hook a thinking person. But the videos that hook kids, those are the worst. Two degrees away from Baby Shark you get derivative schlocky nonsense. And two degrees further you get the scary stuff.

<Parents glancing over the vids see the bright colors, the familiar characters. They aren’t going to see that you’ve got little cartoon Elsa and little cartoon Spiderman together. That they’re at the dentist. But Spiderman is the dentist and he’s giving Elsa a root canal. Elsa cries out in agony and then sing-songs another rhyme and then autoplay pulls up drivel that’s worse yet.

<So think about that for a second. It kinda makes sense. The algorithm moves in mysterious ways. Who knows what it is about these videos that attract kids — just the right kind of repetition to chisel its way into the crevices of their brains and keep them watching for more. That lizard-brain attraction makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why those videos exist at all

<Look, someone paid to animate those videos with an expectation that they’d see a return on that investment through ad revenue. Whoever came up with that struck gold. Tens of thousands of kids watching their animations, letting them make bank. But the market caught on. Once people knew what was popular, it didn’t pay to keep making animations. They just put a man in an Elsa mask and had him sit in a chair, pretending to scream while kiddie muzak plays. Same type of content. Same weight in the algorithm. Cheaper to produce with people than with tech.

<So deep fakes, these days, can you imagine? Can you imagine digitally pretending to be somebody? How expensive that would be to get just right? So much easier to find someone down on their luck, give them some dna, and force them to _frolis_ out a decent lookalike.

Toby edged forward in his seat, leaning towards the center. His mouth stayed closed.

<You know how you don’t see as many group scenes in movies anymore? A lot of close-ups on faces during dialogue? That used to be because they couldn’t pay the actors to be in the same place at the same time. Now they don’t even have to pay multiple actors for their time — they just license their images and get some nobody to read lines in morph.

<Oh and you’re so worried, so sad about your precious little identities. Something that makes you special. Something that makes you matter. Look, everybody, the future arrived and identity doesn’t mean anything. I don’t matter. You don’t matter. You’re clinging to the past. I embraced the future.>

That’s when it clicked. I hadn’t seen Toby before. But I’d definitely seen someone who looked like him. I’d seen a lot of people who looked like him.

<You remember Anonymous? We’re the next iteration of that. I got this body online — ordered a 20-pack of DNA, the same set of 20 pieces of DNA sent to thousands of other individuals across the globe. We all used the _frolis_ maneuver and created identical bodies. Untraceable! Can’t be differentiated! Security through obscurity! We’re all fucking Spartacus!

<Even the name’s not mine. Toby’s one of the approved names for this model. Tribute to the first of us to make the choice to leave individuality behind. I left my old name when I left my old body.

<We’re all reeling from what morphing tech has done to society. But you think the morphing tech is where it stops? If that’s what we all have access too, nobodies like us, imagine what they have in government lock-up. And it won’t be used to liberate us. No, no. Look at all the new regulations, the insurance scams, the forced implants. Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, right?You think those implants are morph-safe? You think they’re not tracking you? You think Big Biofilter is going to protect your personal location data when the government comes knocking?

<The only way out is through. Go forward. Go fast. Hope you’re going in the right direction. I’m just one of thousands with the same DNA. Weird stuff starts happening when we get together. You know about auras, right? Something that started happening along with thought-speak. Someone enters a room and you feel at peace. Someone’s the center of attention. Someone’s intimidating beyond their physical form. Anyway, get some of us together and those auras get stronger.

<Don’t ask me why it happens. I’m no Z-space wizard. But I know some things. I know my mind isn’t here in my body. It’s somewhere else. Somewhere out there. Somewhere beyond. And it’s linked to a body that’s just one of many. Who’s to say that one-to-one link is the way it has to be? Who’s to say we’re done evolving? Who’s to say?>

Toby relaxed back into his chair a bit. He heaved a sigh, and I was surprised to hear him breathing audibly. He’d been silent until that moment.

<I already understand my doubles better than I understand anyone else. One of the great existential tragedies of humankind is the gulf between people. But I take pride in what my doubles accomplish. I feel their pain when we suffer. I feel our joy when we win.

<It’s so nice to know that I’m not alone.>

#

“You know, it’s funny. You go through life, swimming along, traveling from ocean to ocean, singing your heart out. And suddenly you’re fighting for the survival of the entire planet. That’s not a metaphor. That’s what happened to me.

“My human name is Marvin. My real name isn’t easy to translate. When I try to say it outright using the limits of your language, people give me funny looks. So I’ve taken to saying my real name is Eratosthenes Seamount Pod Six Thousand Eleven Adagio in B Minor. But please, call me Marvin. I’m a nothlit. But I was born a whale.”

“Not too long ago, I found myself among the shoals, minding my own whale tail, when a little submarine zipped by me. Now when I say little, I’m adjusting for human scale. So compared to me, a whale, this thing was ittily bittily. Worse, it was insufferable.

“The little submarine was going on and on about how great it was and how it was going to conquer this mighty ocean for the glory of the Helmacron Empire. Or something like that. Whale-song has a thought component as well, so the way the Helmacrons communicated wasn’t completely foreign to me. It was just obnoxiously direct and shrill.

“All I did was try to swim away, and the sub shot me. Shot me with some kind of crystal-powered beam weapon. It shrunk me down to closer to dolphin size, with an important side-effect — it gave me the power to morph.

“I was distraught. Appalled! My tiny whale-voice didn’t carry nearly as far. It took me longer to swim places. I was all out of sorts, so I tried to pursue the sub and convince it, somehow, to change me back. As I swam, I saw chaos in the surrounding seas. Giant sea urchins, shrunken reefs, sea snails of all sizes. And weird shape-shifting sea creatures, too. Sea creatures look weird enough without remixoligizing them.

“The Helmacron sub was too quick for me. But I ended up close to the surface, close enough to hear some human conversation floating down from a nearby ship. I surfaced so I could hear better.

“Their conversation excited me, though the excitement was smaller than usual due to my unfortunate size. The humans were scientists, also on the trail of the dastardly Helmacrons! The Helmacrons had acquired some kind of superior energy source that was letting them terrorize the seas, and these scientists wanted to put a stop to it. I eagerly spouted and swam to attract their attention. ‘Oh, look, a li’l whale! Those cruel, cruel Helmacrons. How could they!’ one of them said.

“It wasn’t long before they’d formed a hypothesis. One that would take me one step closer to my current fate. They knew the Helmacrons had been bestowing morphing ability, and thinking well of the intelligence of whale kind, they set about trying to get me to acquire one of the scientists.

“Morphing was easy. Being human was hard. Mouth sounds! Limbs! The extraordinarily limited capability to make your thoughts and feelings known! I won’t bore you with the trials of learning to be human — you’ve heard such stories before — but I joined their crew and their pursuit of our shared foe. Sometimes I was a copy of one of the human scientists, and sometimes I swam with the ship in my natural form.

“It was clear that the leader of these humans was an individual named Saul. He seemed to be taking the mission rather personally. Everyone else seemed to treat it as a grand adventure. He explained to me that the crystal I had seen powering the Helmacron ship was none other than ‘the Pemalite crystal’, an ancient repository of incredibly energetic energy. I asked how he knew of it and why he wanted it, but he only gave cryptic replies that in his hands, the Pemalite crystal could accomplish great things.

“Anyway, we followed a trail of destruction through the seas, and at some point had to dive. The humans had brought a diving ship appropriate for the occasion, and we embarked on a journey to the ocean floor. It may sound impressive to you, but I assure you, there is a lot of ocean floor that is quite unremarkable.

“Under the sea, the situation went from bad to worse. The Helmacrons had been captured and defeated by a yet more villainous and equally noxious race — the Nartec! The Nartec had for eons been capturing various vessels and crafts in the hopes of one day taking over the entire planet. Foiled time and again by their natural inability and competencelessness, with the Pemalite crystal in hand they were now mere days away from being able to carry out one of their long-sought objectives: destroying the human archipelago-state of Hawaii.

“Our diving vessel had powerful weapons, but the Nartec slipped away. We caught up with them off the coast of California. We didn’t realize they already had a great deal of explosives on their ship, so we carelessly opened fire. The bomb exploded, dramatically and deadlyly. I thought for sure we would all die, but I suddenly found myself in the peaceful coastal sea, with not a human or Nartec to be seen.

“I swam hither and thither until I saw something glinting in the ocean floor. Pretty easy to spot, because as I mentioned, the ocean floor is fairly dull as a rule. The glint belonged to a small crystal that I could not help but recognize as the Pemalite crystal.

“What had happened? Was there a second crystal? Where did Saul and my companions and the Nartec all vanish to?

“‘GOOD QUESTIONS,’ a mysterious voice said. ‘WOULD YOU LIKE SOME ANSWERS?’

“I swam around to look for the source of the voice, and saw a big old blue fish with a long gray beard. ‘HELLO’, the fish said. ‘I AM THE ELLIMIST.’

“I introduced myself. The Ellimist was a funny fish and explained to me that the explosion of the Nartec bomb had sent me through a _sario rip_ , back in time, but conveniently in the very location the Pemalite crystal was first found by the Helmacrons. Unfortunately, I’d be stuck in the past unless I could create an explosion of a similar size. At least I might be able to hold onto the Pemalite crystal and keep it safe in my baleen.

“I asked how the Ellimist knew so much, and why I had been involved at all. He said, `I KNOW YOU AND YOUR KIND. I HAVE IRONS IN ALL THE FIRES. I HAVE FINGERS IN MANY PIES. WHERE DO YOU THINK WHALES GET THE TERM PODS, EH?` The fish winked and disappeared.

“Moments later, the undersea volcano hidden below me erupted and sent me and the Pemalite crystal back to the future.

“In the future, of course, a lot had changed. The peace of my ocean had been restored. But months later, Saul tracked me down anyway. The Ellimist had warned me to think carefully before giving up the crystal. This time I thought to ask Saul why he looked so different in my whale morph than in my human morph. He explained that the hologram covering his true body was tuned to human eyes and not whale eyes. But he was eager to get his hands on the Pemalite crystal.

“I pressed him for why, and he confessed: he feared for his kind. With the advent of the Human Morphing Era, their technological superiority was being called into question. What if they were discovered? What if they needed to change their programming to remove the shackles placed on them by their creators?

“Frankly I found Saul’s story too incredible to be true. So many things didn’t add up. Enough to make even a normally kindhearted whale suspicious. It was clear, after moments of consideration, that Saul was up to no good. There was only once choice. I incorporated the Pemalite crystal into my morph-self and became a human nothlit. Now the Pemalite crystal is in a blob of matter out in Z-space where Saul and the rest of the Chee and the Nartec and the Helmacrons can’t find it.

“I’ve saved the world, and my whale brethren, and all I had to give up was my humanity. Whalemanity. Whality. I don’t know. Turns out being a human is fine. The language instincts you all have are frankly, incredible. And Cooler Ranch flavoring. It’s to die for.

“The funny thing is, when I tell this story, nobody ever believes it. Well, more accurate to say, nobody even remembers hearing it.”

#

“Well, now it’s time for the Crystal Ceremony. Just a moment.”

Paula went over to the coffee table. I could tell that the others were eager to get to this part. They were shifting in their seats with anticipation.

When Paula returned to the circle, she was carrying a little cigar box. When she opened it, the contents of the box gleamed. She reached inside and pulled out a single small blue crystal.

“If you’d like to participate, please hold out your hands as I walk around the circle.”

Jessica was the first to receive a crystal. She crushed it between her hands and inhaled deeply into a cloud of blue crystal dust. She slumped in her chair as if she’d suddenly found herself in the middle of a nap.

I didn’t know this part was going to happen. What was going on?

The next three all took their crystals. Paula paused in front of me. I didn’t have my hands held out.

“What is this stuff?” I asked.

Paula smiled. “Oh, these are ketramine crystals. They act as a conduit for your mind to connect with your old body, trapped in Z-space. The effect only lasts for about five minutes, and it’s perfectly safe.”

I took a crystal. I started to crush it between my hands. But then I held them tightly together so the crystal dust couldn’t escape.

My old body… Thinking about it floating out there somewhere made me queasy. Becoming a nothlit had felt so final, the reminder that I was somehow still tethered to my original body was unsettling.

When Paula finished delivering the crystals, she took one herself.

#

I was really young when the blue box started to upend society as we knew it. I was still finishing grade school during the time of hope and then backlash that followed… I talked with my friends about what it would be like if we could morph, but nobody could afford access to the cube.

Six months ago, I heard about this new service. They would match you based on a few basic demographics, most importantly, location. Another real person, just looking to change everything, to make everything feel better. I filled out the form and prayed.

I got matched within days. It was too good to be true. My appointment couldn’t come soon enough, but I had to wait until three weeks ago when I turned eighteen.

I walked into the clinic and saw her for the first time. She was short, with long hair cascading down her back. She had a summer dress on, with flowers. She looked nervous, but I bet I looked nervous too.

After we filled out all the paperwork, an attendant brought out an Escafil device for us to touch. It was smaller than I thought it would be.

Then it was time to acquire each other. I put out my hand, fingers outstretched. She mirrored me and said, “E.T. morph home”. Then I snorted and she laughed and I think we both relaxed. I said, “I’m ready.” She nodded and began to morph.

I saw her face melt away and get replaced by mine. I got a little shorter and felt my pants get looser in the groin and tighter in the hips. It felt like my face was itching as the little beard hairs all shriveled up and withered away. Her shoulders were bulging out wider, her nose lengthening, her chest flattening. I think human to human morphing must be one of the easiest, because the sounds didn’t bother me at all.

When the morph was complete, I took a deep breath. It was still me breathing, but every single part of my body was different. I felt sturdier. I felt realer. I’d never been that comfortable in my own skin, especially since puberty, and this was better. It was immediately better.

I was so happy. I think it must have been radiating off of my face like sunlight, because he laughed. A laugh I’d heard before, always hated, coming to life outside of me. I started laughing too, and my voice was so light. So lovely.

The oddest thing was how good he looked in my body. You’d think I’d be jealous. I’d seen that body through a lot, but like a lot of things, sometimes you just have to acknowledge when it’s time to move on. We were like hermit crabs trading shells of equal size. I’d found a home for him and he’d found a home for me.

#

Everyone was asleep but me. What was I waiting for?

“Oh, excuse me.”

The door had opened — a woman was coming into the room carrying a few boxes. I felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong. I began to stammer, but she talked over me.

“Sorry for interrupting, I just thought I could drop off these boxes during the ceremony. I’ll just be a minute.”

She crossed the room and set the boxes down on top of the piano. On her way back out, she stopped to look at me. She looked at my hands. Then she looked at my face, and said, quite kindly, “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s just that my hands… they’re full of the dust now.”

“I have an idea,” she said with a smile. “Hold your breath and make a run for it. Here, I’ll hold the door.”

I hurried outside, and found myself laughing with the new arrival. I got a closer look at her face, and suddenly I recognized her. It was the woman who’d founded the N.A. in the first place.

“Oh my gosh. You’re Mrs. Chambers! I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you.”

She was legendary. Someone who’d worked for the first President to acknowledge aliens and morphing and all that. Someone who’d travelled the world and to outer space. Someone who’d loved and lost and had a special place in her heart for nothlits.

“I like to stay out of the spotlight. So, uh, you didn’t want to take the crystal?”

I felt embarrassed. “It’s not for me. I mean, the group sharing, it was a little different than what I expected. People had a lot of heavy stuff to work through. They’d been through a lot. I hadn’t even considered… Well, it’s just a lot to take in.”

Mrs. Chambers was quiet. Something in her mind had taken her very far away from the church basement hallway. “I still wonder whether it was for the best.”

“Oh, no, N.A. does so much good work! I didn’t mean to suggest that at all—”

She gestured with her hand to cut me off. “It’s okay. You didn’t say anything wrong. All I mean is when it comes to something like morphing, it’s so easy to see the opportunity and not the cost. It’s something I keep trying to learn. And it’s been getting harder to hear the stories, when things are getting so bad.”

“It’s not all bad, Mrs. Chambers.” Then I told her my name and my story. “For the first time, I saw myself as beautiful. And that means everything.”

Her eyes welled up with tears. “Thank you, Velma, for sharing.”


End file.
